Northern France’s logistics to drastically change with Seine-Nord Europe Canal
FACE GRANDLILLE - n°209 - Mai 2009 www.facegrandlille.com
With the Seine-Nord Europe Canal in sight, more than ever before, the Northern France region counts on combined transport development and on alternative means of transport.
The people in the neighbouring areas of the Seine-Nord Canal do not intend to merely look at barges floating by along the new 106-km-long waterway between Compiègne and Cambrai. Such is the case in the Nord Pas-de-Calais region, where plans are being boosted by the 26km section of the canal! “The building of the Seine-Nord Europe Canal is a historic landmark that can be compared to the building of the Suez Canal at the time” said newly elected Grand Lille Chamber of Commerce Chairman Bruno Bonduelle in May 2008. “When put into service it will disrupt the map of logistic areas and we cannot stand watching” he said, adding that he aimed to “work also for better synergism between river ports.” “Some connections were only thought of until now but may well soon come true with the Seine-Nord Europe Canal” he predicted.
Things have now started moving. “And why not reinvigorate the currently escheated wide gauge canal between Valenciennes and Dunkirk?” he asked while definitely setting the outlines of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry area in May 2008. Though the chairman slightly exaggerated when comparing the Seine-Nord Canal works with those for the Suez Canal, this will be a huge piece of work. As the Channel Tunnel was. Yet such major projects have already taken place on the European continent with the digging of a canal in central Northern Germany.
The Mittellandkanal now connects the Ems to the Weser and to the Elbe, its course crossing the large rural northern plain from West to East. Its construction started in 1915 and only ended in 1939. Since then, the 320-km-long canal has been adjusted to fit the current European 1,350-ton gauge.
A plan booster
According to Bernard Pacory, “the main thing about Seine-Nord Europe is not the canal itself but the regional development and planning with the building of the four platforms, and among them the one in Marquion.”
For the manager of Delta 3, this one could well become one extension to the Delta 3 platform! He thinks that “the existing platforms such as those in Saint-Omer, Béthune, Harnes, Dourges etc. will have to organize jointly with the four platforms planned, and with a Nord Pas-de-Calais specific quadripod”.
The manager of both Delta 3 and Ports de Lille is particularly referring to the ports located within the large Lille urban area, the Dourges site at the border of the mining area, the three ports on the sea front and to the infrastructure in the Valenciennes and Cambrai districts that will probably integrate the Marquion platform.
“Ports in Northern France will take advantage of the new canal if and only if they cooperate to avoid an ever-increasing number of ports and terminals” he thinks.
Besides, the latest IT should make it possible for the waterway mode to enter the interoperability era thanks to easier planning and management of traffic and of transport procedures.
Facilitating logistic flows
The invitation to tender for the Seine-Nord Europe Canal has just been issued. “This will be part of a major stage for Seine-Nord Europe Canal. This step in the legal proceedings allows companies to study the case and, if necessary, to bid for the design, building, operation, maintenance, regeneration and funding of the canal, as part of a partnership agreement,” explains VNF managing director Thierry Duclaux (see full interview here).
The consortium that will thus be chosen at the end of the public offering should start the works by end 2011 and commissioning is scheduled end 2015. VNF considers that the project will create 10,000 to 11,000 jobs during construction, 4,500 of them directly on the building site as early as 2011. These figures compare to those of the tunneling under the Channel, as 12,000 paid jobs had been needed for the construction between December 1986 and 1993.
The Seine-Nord Europe Canal particularly aims at facilitating logistic flows, just as the Chunnel now does. Inside this construction some 14 million trucks, 250 million cars and 220 million tons of goods have travelled, recently said Eurotunnel Chairman and Managing Director Jacques Gounon at the Comité Grand Lille Conference in Coquelles on April 9th. Boulogne-sur-Mer and Dunkirk are looking forward to the building of the Seine-Nord Europe Canal. Boulogne is developing its ‘Freight Terminal Hub Port’ on the former sites of the Comilog that can accommodate unaccompanied trailers, among others. It should be operational by July 1st, 2009 with the commissioning of the first ro-ro deck with double deck-double lane ramps. This first building phase accounts for a 45-million-euro investment and should generate 6 to 800 jobs in the two years to come.
In Dunkirk water course transit traffic rose from 8% to 10.5% between 2004 and 2008. To facilitate traffic flows the port is starting to use both inland waterways and seaways for freight loading and unloading. Such is the case at SICA Nord Céréales, and also at QPO and on DMT wharves. Dunkirk also invested in inner ports - Valenciennes, Dourges etc - with Ports de Lille and might think of acquiring stakes in the Marquion platform.
“For the time being, waterway loadings in Dunkirk for Picardy and Paris do not exceed 600 tons but in the near future they could reach 3,000 tons. Before 2020 13.3 to 15 million tons of goods should be carried on the Seine-Nord Europe Canal”, recently added Dunkirk’s Urban Community Chairman Michel Delebarre.
Vocational integration first
Local councillors, economic and political leaders are all struggling so that the new Seine-Nord Europe Canal might bring actual economic rewards to local development. Witness the recent creation of the GERIF - interest grouping of regional waterway companies - that has just clustered some of the region’s building and engineering companies such as Ramery, Rabot-Dutilleul, Hiolle Industries and Lhotellier. They all stand up for the regional governance of a logistic platform as Marquion. VNF managing director Thierry Duclaux, for his part, hopes for cooperation between the regional governance and other partners: the Departmental Authority, sea ports… and VNF of course!
Thierry BECQUERIAUX
| INVESTMENT: A major European public-private partnership | The €3.2 billion investment (2005 value) necessary to the building of Seine-Nord Europe corresponds to a €4.2 billion borrowing requirement (today’s value) over the 2011 to 2015 construction period. The borrowing is based on an extended partnership and shared between the following co-financiers according to their respective profits: The French State (via the AFITF), the European Union (as part of the RTE-T programme), the local authorities benefiting from the project, the users of the canal (via a toll) and private partners (as part of a public-private partnership agreement). This €4.2 billion borrowing requirement should be equally shared between private financing and public financing, the latter falling into the following divisions: €333 million from the European Union, €900 million from the State and €900 million from the local authorities. |
| NEWS SERNAM: near and fast at the same time |
“We have placed our facilities around ‘multimodal hubs’ and developed our trade according to these new facilities” explains Étienne George, the regional manager of operations for Sernam Services Région Nord, located in Lesquin CRT 5. Sernam is specialized in express transport - a notion dating back to 1978 - and now claims the top rank in multimodal transport combining rail and road. “The company operates on a private market but what is specific is that our reference subcontractor is the SNCF” they explain. Sernam relies on four trains running on the high speed network on two ’slots’ from Valenton near Creil every night A first slot to Orange and a second linking Valenton to Toulouse via Bordeaux. With 350,000m² of warehousing, 55 branches across the country, 510 daily road links and four express unit trains, Sernam forwards 18 million parcels a year. |
| CHANNELS Euralogistic: a logistic centre of excellence |
The Euralogistic centre of excellence is a regional action plan initiated by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Lens district together with the conurbation committees and with the Bassin Minier Unesco (an association promoting the mining heritage). The logistic channel of excellence Euralogistic / Delta 3 is being developed in close partnership with the State, the Regional Authorities, the Regional Chamber of Commerce and Industry and all the region’s participants in the channel. Over the last few years, the district of Lens has strongly positioned itself on the regional logistic channel. Combined to actual economic voluntarism, its outstanding geographical location grants this fast-growing area a role of regional head-end in logistics within the SRDE (regional perspective for economic development). The aim is thus to be the pacesetter and facilitator for a region which is logistic by essence. Today Euralogistic is a network of 500 regional players interconnected via the regional Internet portal www.nord-logistique.com, which includes among others a partnership with the international competitive cluster I-trans - innovative transport. |
| NEWS Marquion logistic platform: first step |
The EPCI - four intercommunal cooperation public bodies - has just founded the “association for the development of Northern France’s port areas.” Just like the one founded in Picardy, this association gathers the communities of municipalities of Bertincourt, Bapaume, Marquion and Vitry-en-Artois (Osartis) (1). The aim of this future association is “to promote and foster the economic and tourist development of the area.” This obviously concerns the logistic platform’s 156km², but also the river halt in Hermies - a marina is to be built - and the grain port in Havrincourt. “Let us not forget the building of Corbehem’s inland port which is included in the regional perspective of transport,” adds Pierre Georget. The file is about to be settled. The €23 million investment will be based on a 58% subsidy rate. The platform in Marquion is the only one located in Nord Pas-de-Calais and will probably be 156-ha large with 1000m of unloading quays. It will be served by the A26 motorway and by waterway (Seine-Nord Europe Canal). A rail connection is yet another possibility…providing a new rail section is built between Cambrai and Arras, whose cost may reach €200 million. |
| INFRASTRUCTURE The missing link |
The future 106-km-long canal aims at developing a multimodal transport network. It will act as a logistic hub for the 7 sea ports on the Le Havre-Rotterdam line while bolstering their hinterland in the north of France and of Europe. The Seine-Nord Europe Canal is the missing link to the wide gauge river link Seine-Escaut, the river line of the Nord Amsterdam - Paris corridor. By 2015 it will open up the Seine river basin, linking it to the rest of the European network via the Nord Pas-de-Calais region. The North Canal does not allow barges over 650 tons and had become a real traffic bottleneck between the two basins. The Seine-Nord Europe Canal will probably offer an alternative, reliable and competitive means of transport. Le Havre, Rouen, Dunkirk, Zeebrugge, Antwerp and Rotterdam sea ports will thus be interconnected. The link will boost the activities of the multimodal transport hub in Dourges. It will benefit the port of Dunkirk as it will extend the current Dunkirk-Escaut Canal, and an overall reorganization of the region’s river ports is expected as a result. |
